DistroWatch Weekly

A weekly opinion column and a summary of events from the distribution world

DistroWatch Weekly

Reader Comments

1 • UBUNTU (by RIGODOR on 2006-07-24 11:21:36 GMT from Philippine, Philippines)
Can't wait for the Ubuntu Edgy... Which do you prefer? Ubuntu or SLED? There is a review posted at distrowatch... check it out at the homepage (left navigation)2 • Fedora :) (by CoolGoose on 2006-07-24 11:45:30 GMT from Bucuresti, Romania)
Well i like Fedora :D.3 • aptitude (by lezard on 2006-07-24 11:51:15 GMT from New York, United States)
to completely remove a package, use '_' (purge) and not 'r' (remove), it will delete configuration files as well.4 • apt-get interfaces (by Fred on 2006-07-24 11:58:13 GMT from London, United Kingdom)
I personally use all 3: apt-get if I want a specific package, synaptic if I'm looking for a function but not quite sure what packages fit the bill and aptitude to update or remove packages.5 • News from the kennels (by Lobster on 2006-07-24 12:18:03 GMT from Rochdale, United Kingdom)
Slax produce a very pleasant environment to work with. It makes Linux a pleasure. So well done to them. Well done to Debian for being "boring" (aka stable). Nice to see a smaller download for their live CD. . . Never did download their 14 CD set . . .

After producing the fastest KDE known to penguins, Puppy is taking its first steps towards Puppy Gnome - which many considered impossible. Not so.

This Thursday a Puppy test release offering writing to NTFS will be available.

In August we will be offering hardware companies opportunities to learn why at least two manufacturers now put Puppy in hardware with our Puppy Media Fiesta . . .

Our new biz site is being developed.

A new 50MB for business card CD's using Opera has been released - "Mean Puppy"

Our new Meaty Puppy promises to be even smaller 39MB with a full set of programs including Browser, Chat, Editors, utilities etc. You then add the components such as the bigger browsers you prefer. Should be out in August http://puppylinux.org/wikka/Puppy2xxCE

Anyways that is the news from the kennels :)

Puppy Publicity6 • apt-cache (by nico on 2006-07-24 12:20:57 GMT from Riesa, Germany)
if you're using plain apt-get from the command line, you need to use apt-cache as well! using apt-cache search database you'll get a list of packages with "database" in their names or descriptions.

other important apt-cache commands are * apt-cache policy bla - to show existing versions of a package * apt-cache show blub - shows description of a package

generally speaking, apt-get does some modification in the root file system and must therefore be run by the root user, while apt-cache just shows some information and can be run as a normal user.7 • Distrowatch is FAST... (by Flavio de Oliveira on 2006-07-24 12:29:07 GMT from Porto Alegre, Brazil)
WOW, I've just upgraded GoblinX homepage to annouce the GoblinX Mini release and few minutes later Distrowatch had already published the release... NICE...8 • Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft Knot 1 (by Anonymous on 2006-07-24 12:35:45 GMT from Topeka, United States)
"At this juncture, I'm not sure what the point of this release is. I can only speculate it was to create further interest or publicity for Ubuntu now that the excitement over 6.06 is decreasing."

Wasn't this a scheduled snapshot so that people wanting to be early testers could do so without having to do an ftp install? After downloading and installing the ISO all they have to do is keep it updated with (apt-get).

As for what is in this snapshot that is different from 6.06, according to the announcement:"The primary changes from Dapper have been the re-merging of changesfrom Debian. Common to all variants, we have upgraded the kernel to2.6.17. In Ubuntu, Gnome has been updated to 2.15.4 and GTK+ to 2.10."9 • About APT... (by Caraibes on 2006-07-24 13:03:08 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
Good article... I enjoyed reading it...

As of me, I use both apt-get, and Synaptic...

I feel both are very convenient tools...

It is a good thing that Jebba included Apt in Blag, which is Fedora based...10 • Typo (by Jonathan on 2006-07-24 14:11:12 GMT from Union, United States)
Slax 5.7.1 should be 5.1.7 (in the title)11 • Quick look of Debian Live-Sid KDE (by Fonzarelli on 2006-07-24 14:16:51 GMT from Kajaani, Finland)The system was stable and fast in the livecd format, but the fonts weren't very pretty.

The command for adjusting the font settings under Debian Sid is "sudo dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig-config".12 • Umbongo (by Tommy Tomato on 2006-07-24 15:00:11 GMT from Savannah, United States)
It's nice to see amphibians getting some much-needed publicity by way of the new version of Ubuntu ('Edgy Eft'). Mammals dominated all the other releases, so it's good to see a little more diversity this time! Plus, the kids love the animal names. Genius!13 • Ubuntu for now. (by RobNyc on 2006-07-24 15:46:05 GMT from Montclair, United States)
Seems like PCLinuxOS is never gonna come =14 • Slax version typo (by James on 2006-07-24 16:12:10 GMT from Islandia, United States)
The section label for Slax says "Slax 5.7.1" when it should be Slax 5.1.7.Other than that, a great DWW as usual.Thanks.15 • Other packaging systems (by Wilfred on 2006-07-24 16:24:05 GMT from London, United Kingdom)
The package round-up was nice, but you missed a few notable apps IMO. There is adept, which is ok but a little slow, and the new smart package manager which claims to resolve dependencies more intelligently than any others available, although it's still in beta.16 • No subject (by pilpilon on 2006-07-24 16:58:13 GMT from , Israel)
to Tommy Tomato:

Dappers? Mammals?17 • seems like pclinux is never gonna come out (by hekar on 2006-07-24 18:12:18 GMT from London, Canada)
The lastest pclinuxos is still great, you dont need bleeding edge software to have a great desktop distro and I rather they take their time working on a great inovative linux distro than release a update of v9.218 • RE: 16 (by SFN on 2006-07-24 18:31:24 GMT from Rochester, United States)
"Dappers? Mammals?"

May I suggest Pretentious Pirhana, Klassy Komodo and Cocky Cockroach?23 • Synaptic still has poor user interface design (by gnobuddy on 2006-07-24 21:06:04 GMT from Marina Del Rey, United States)
When I first used Synaptic a couple of years ago, it had an "install" button that did not install the software, but instead queued it for installation. It also had an "execute" button that did not execute the software, but rather, installed it. Two buttons that do something completely different from what the labels say...

From what you wrote, things are not much better today: there is still a button labelled "install" which does not install the software but queues it, and a button labelled "Apply" which does not apply anything, but instead installs the software.

If those two buttons were labelled "select this package for installation" and "install previously selected packages", their function would be much clearer to the user. Even better would be to lose the "queue and install" two-step behaviour of the program, and simply have a single button labelled "install" that would, in fact, install the selected package. If the user needs to install multiple packages, she will just have to do so one at a time. While less flexible, this is a lot clearer.

While there has been a lot of progress in Linux usability since I first started using it in 1999, this sort of thing is still with us, despite being so easy to fix. All it takes is watching a few unsuspecting first-time users struggle with your software, trying to figure out how to use it, and developers will have these sorts of issues clearly pointed out. I am thankful Novell has finally begun to do some of these usability studies.

-Gnobuddy24 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-07-24 21:16:04 GMT from Marina Del Rey, United States)
May I suggest Pretentious Pirhana, Klassy Komodo and Cocky Cockroach?-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------It seems the release names also start with successively later letters in the alphabet, so we need something starting with F, G, and H to follow Edgy Eft.

How about "Feisty Featherfin", "Glamorous Gecko", and "Heroic Hornet"? :)

-Gnobuddy25 • package managers (by Warpengi on 2006-07-24 21:36:57 GMT from Calgary, Canada)
I moved from Mandriva to Debian and one of the things I noticed right away was that, with apt-get, dependencies are not removed when uninstalling. Urpmi does remove dependencies. From my experience so far I sould say urpmi is superior but that is probably more a matter of the maintainers keeping dependencies up to date and conflicts resolved within the package database.

Nice to know that Aptitude removes dependencies. I will have to give it a try. Since I run Debian on my servers with no X installed it is nice to see that it is ncurses based as well. It seems odd to me that a front-end contains functions that the back end should have.26 • Re : 23 (by ShakaZ on 2006-07-24 21:56:56 GMT from Bruxelles, Belgium)
Maybe your opinion on the actual state of the Synaptic interface would be worth something if only you had taken the 3min. needed to test it...

I don't think making a button 10 times larger, to place the text you suggest into it, would make the Synpatic any better... That kind of text belongs in a tooltip or in a warning somewhere else. Anyhow you can't know if there are any such warnings or tips as you haven't tried it for some time...27 • Re 23 + (by tom on 2006-07-24 22:48:05 GMT from Helena, United States)
If you think Synaptic is hard for new useres, try sitting them in front of the command line. apt-get and aptitude are much more "in the know". As a new user who would guess-

Let alone all the flags/options.28 • eventual insect H name for Ubuntu (by Eric Hawk on 2006-07-24 23:22:39 GMT from Warminster, United States)
A previous poster had it almost right.....it should be Horny Hornet.29 • RE: #13 # 17 #20 #21 aptitude rules (by Greg on 2006-07-25 00:30:18 GMT from Victoria, Canada)
Debian Etch is shaping up quite nicely but it still is getting polish. Got to say that the laptop task doesn't even install hibernation to disk so it works. Much better then last release where they had to use 2.4 kernel default because 2.6.8 would hang machines like mine unless acpi was disabled.

backports.org doesn't know better? The project should have chosen there own name. "Debian Sarge" is not theres for using. I believe Debian is trademarked. They should fix there name and rerelease

Suse Enterprise Linux Desktop 10 is really nice. I really want to try that out provided it has got the necessary updates since release candidate 3 which had some issues installing software. Suse has not really let me down compared to other distributions.

Fedora Core 6 is still zooming along. I am glad they introduced 6 a month release cycle. It really helped both FC and short release cycles catch on. They must be working hard or at least darn smart.

Gfxboot could be a nice improvement to isolinux for the cds and both grub and lilo in the installation. I can't think of another way I've seen internationalization done at the boot prompt. (Still wish Mandriva used a gfxboot enhanced grub as a default too, but they have setup lilo the nicest I've seen)

Apt-get frontends sure are nice. Aptitude is my favourite because it gives a command interface and a 'graphical' interface even if your stuck without X11. i for install and r for remove are really easy to remember. + install, - remove and _ remove including configuration is a little harder. I wish all programs opened up an easy user interface when you don't specify an option, or just do it if you tell it the options like aptitude; Now that is intuitive. I've used synaptic and adept too and they are really nice. Never tried others like Kpackage Kynaptic or smart (does it really do debian packages)#13Kubuntu now, because got hibernate working. PCLinuxOS preview .93 can be installed now or upgraded from .92. I still think the top few on distrowatch rank are coincidently the most polished including SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 Desktop too.#17They due make updates to preview .92 (fyi it isn't v9.2 it is .92 because it is a preview) I like the helpful blurb you give.#20You may be unlucky with your laptop. I would suggest www.google.com/linux search for the name of your machine model and the word "hibernate". Suse has done hibernate (suspend to disk) since 9.2 or 9.1 for me. Ubuntu derivatives also work when I fixed my grub configuration file. I had to cat /proc/swaps and add my swap device to the end of the line. Email me if you like and I'll try to help. I had to install some packages in Fedora Core 5. Again I used google to find the package repositories. SLED probably works but I haven't got around to using it.#21I'll bet Mepis 6 will be reviewed here soon. Even if it is not lots of other places will blab about it. I could see why you may like it better but myself I really like Kubuntu more. To each there own.#23I see your point it is kind of confusing. I still find Synaptic has a wounderful interface that will upgrade, install, query or remove software and is quick to use. Windows sure could have used a universal upgrading application with software repositories set up. It is so fast to update in the everything background. The criticism of the quick example can be ignored.30 • 25 (by AC on 2006-07-25 00:30:38 GMT from , United States)
"I sould say urpmi is superior but that is probably more a matter of the maintainers keeping dependencies up to date and conflicts resolved within the package database"

That guess would be way off. As aptitude's abilities demonstrate.

"It seems odd to me that a front-end contains functions that the back end should have."

Who says it "should" have those features? Aptitude is a front-end for a variety of tools and they're all front-ends for dpkg. (So far no one has mentioned my preferred front-end, the fabulous but little-known wajig, but no matter.) Sometimes one doesn't want to remove dependencies and consistent with the Unix philosophy, we should have tools that do one thing well and give you the choice to add other features. Then add tools that combine those tools. Aptitude is of the latter variety.

I will say this though: not enough people know the benefits of aptitude.31 • wajig (by AC on 2006-07-25 01:34:17 GMT from , United States)http://wajig.togaware.com/32 • Upcoming Source Mage release (by Katz on 2006-07-25 02:16:20 GMT from Berlin, Germany)
The "Upcoming Releases and Announcements" section should be updated to include the Source Mage 0.9.6.1 release. A release candidate iso has been made available for testing. The Source Mage 0.9.6.1 release will be based on the recently updated stable grimoire.

Are you saying that Aptitude resolves dependencies better and installs packages with fewer errors than apt-get? There is nothing in the article to suggest that. I don't say it happens a lot with apt but it can be a real PITA when it does.

"Who says it "should" have those features"

Well obviously I do:-) I got used to urpmi removing dependencies so that is what I am used to.

Why would one want to leave unused dependencies in? If you want or need to install additional packages it is far saner to install them individually than to install them as dependencies and then remove packages for which they are depends. Leaving unused dependencies in just creates a mess. I suspect that that was a lack in apt-get that the Mandriva developers saw when they created urpmi.

By the way, is there a command line tool for determining dependencies on installed packages in Debian?34 • 33 (by AC on 2006-07-25 03:59:03 GMT from , United States)
I seem to have misunderstppd your criticisms of apt-get. I've never encountered the problems using stable, though on occasion, boxen running testing with unstable have. I don't know enough about Mandrivel to make a comparison or to know if you're comparing apples and oranges.

What is familiar is naturally preferred in most cases. But i would add to my remark about Unix philosophy that removing dependencies also violates the dictum to provide mechanism, not set policy.

Certainly installing FOO to get FOODEP then removing FOO is an odd way to proceed. And aptitude does show the courtesy of not removing FOODEP with FOO when, subsequent to FOO, BAR was installed which also depends on FOODEP. However, if BAR is to replace FOO, it makes a huge difference using aptitude if you first remove FOO or first add BAR. With apt-get, it makes no difference. Also, if you are building FOO from source but want the Debian versions of FOODEP, you may want to remove FOO without removing FOODEP. I'm sure there are other cases where this behavior might be desirable. In any case, it's a policy question and having a back-end (apt-get is actually fairly close to the front, but no matter) that doesn't try to set policy is a good thing.

Of course, ultimately, what we're talking about is a difference in design philosophy.

At one end, there's Red Hat (and I would guess SUSE and Madriva), which tries to automatically do "the right thing", which is depends by what most users would want in most situations. At the other end, there's Slackware, which tries to give the user total control and not to make assumptions, but in so doing offers fewer assistive tools.

Debian's position is in the middle. They try to offer a variety of tools to meet a variety of needs. The price of being both flexible and powerful is complexity - both the tools and Debian policy.

(Gentoo is similarly in the middle, but focuses on a different set of choices being easier.)

The grep filter is only necessary if you really object to seeing the other package info roll past. And I'm sure there are other ways to get this info, but I wanted to give you a prompt response.35 • Puppy getting worse? (by Raymond on 2006-07-25 04:20:08 GMT from Forestville, Australia)
Has anyone noticed that Puppy is getting worse? Releases 1.7 - 1.8 were great but after the rewrite of scripts for 2.0 it always hangs when you open MUT, and the other mount tool just flashes on screen. It's unusable for me.36 • Re: 33 tool for determining dependencies (by Greg on 2006-07-25 05:29:08 GMT from Victoria, Canada)
There are two command line tools that will show dependencies on installed packages in Debian that come to mind. Use apt-cache or aptitude with the show option. An example of this would be to type in the commands:apt-cache show abiwordaptitude show abiword

Please note that you can look at dependencies recursively with aptitude. Run aptitude and use / to search for what the package. Select the dependency with Enter and then select the package that is shown for that dependency. You can then look at its dependencies and so on. ? gives help for more info in aptitude.

Warning: Don't get too hung up on dependencies. If everything works, who cares? Most of the time you can waist disk space and install whatever you think you need. A few megabites is not going to matter normally.37 • 36 (by AC on 2006-07-25 05:45:42 GMT from , United States)
Of course, I left out apt-cache. (the grep filter works the same there)

or it can leave dependencies, like apt-get.39 • Advertising list (by Soloact on 2006-07-25 09:18:37 GMT from Redding, United States)
What ever happened to your list of advertisers, or sponsors? I was browsing and an ad caught my eye just as I was going to a new page. Of course backspace loaded up the next ad in rotation, and I never came across it again. Bring back the list, please. Thank you.BTW, it was an ad for computers preloaded with Linux, zdesk-something. Will keep looking...40 • Debian Live (by AC on 2006-07-25 12:01:09 GMT from , United States)
"That said, I'm having a hard time imagining the niche for these live-sids. I wasn't able to locate an installer. Perhaps with the small download sizes of 354 MB or less, they might make limited rescue and repair disks. My conclusion is it works, but it doesn't excite."

The main point is to have a live CD that will give a truly representative experience of Debian (particularly Debian stable, when Etch is released) for demonstration purposes, something Knoppix, wonderful as it is, does not do. And it will include d-i, cdebootstrap, and debootstrap, so it will be entirely possible to install Debian from the live CD. It should also be possible to use for many of the tasks for which Knoppix is used and the aim is that there be a customization infrastructure for creating live CDs with a particular purpose, e.g. security audits, application demo, et al.41 • Debian Live (by AC on 2006-07-25 12:03:29 GMT from , United States)http://live.debian.net/wiki/WhyDebianLive42 • answer to : 35 • Puppy getting worse? (by Caraibes on 2006-07-25 12:07:47 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
I had that feeling too, but I believe the Puppy community is exploring its possibilities.

keep in mind Puppy still have a great potential... I must say I was more happy with version 1.08... But I can't complain, because newer version have sound working for VIA 82xxx chipset... I had trouble installing 2.x on usb pendrive...

All in all, I would say Puppy is going thru a "sid" phase (unstable), but it might give birth to an absolutely lovely Puppy soon.

I trust Barry and the crew, they still have the best live-cd around when it comes to light distro, or one of the best live-cd of them all...

By the way, cheers to the Puppy team !!!

;o)43 • Mepis 6.0 and LiveCDs (by Michael on 2006-07-25 12:34:51 GMT from Nashville, United States)
I have installed the new version of Mepis on two computers and I think it's excellent. The installation is easy and the hardware detection superb. The only peripherals that I had to configure were printers, but Mepis identified both printers so the configurations only involved a few mouse clicks.

I also think the LiveCD concept is great. (Thank you, Klaus.) Just put your /home directory on a separate partition and if you hose your installation, you can be back in business in minutes with a LiveCD. I commend Debian for developing their own LiveCD (see 41 posted by AC).44 • 43 (by AC on 2006-07-25 12:56:15 GMT from , United States)
People should also be aware of bootcd, which has been available for awhile: a script for converting your existing Debian install into a bootable CD. Unlike Knoppix, et al, the resulting CD is really only suitable for the hardware it was built on, but for rescuing your own system or running your system read-only, it's quite handy.

Debian-Administration had an article on it awhile back

http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/14845 • 43 Mepis (by tom on 2006-07-25 13:21:49 GMT from Helena, United States)
My wife uses Mepis so I also installed Mepis 6.0. So far, so good no real problems or surprizes (last month Ubuntu did not go as well).

Overall a very nice, "full featured" disto for Windows converts who do not want to meddle with the CLI. Compares favorably to any disto for ease of use and newbie friendliness. For the most part it "just works" out of the box.

I have not had time to look "under the hood".

A little too resource hungry/daemon prone for my tastes as I prefer something a little lighter, but I tinker more then my wife.46 • Options for both (by Jesse on 2006-07-25 14:04:46 GMT from Calgary, Canada)
I enjoyed the debate over what a package manager shoulddo and should not do. I like the idea of my packagemanager removing unused dependancies. However,there are times when I would prefer it did not (I use yumon Fedora) and I would like an option to simply removethe target package.

Example: yum --leave-deps remove package_name

I don't know how many times yum has become confused anddecided it had to uninstall something it shouldn't have.47 • koffice (by SC on 2006-07-25 15:37:25 GMT from Redwood City, United States)
'They included KWord, Kpresenter, and KSpreadsheet for those pesky office tasks.'

The implication is that these applications are suited to the task.

The statement quoted above tends to perpetuate the myth that KOffice is a capable product with respect to office tasks. KOffice may be outstanding for home users who don't need compatibility with popular/standard office software and don't need to use particular popular/standard fonts. For many with office jobs, KOffice fails.

Accurate reporting in this regard will increase the awareness of the people who put together Linux distributions, some of whom may have no office experience themselves.48 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-07-25 15:50:05 GMT from , United States)
"For many with office jobs, KOffice fails."

And for many, it does not. YMMV. But the idea that everytime KOffice is mentioned, one needs a disclaimer is ridiculously pedantic.49 • Re: koffice (by Ariszló on 2006-07-25 22:17:17 GMT from Budapest, Hungary)
What fonts can't you use with KOffice? I have never had any problems with its fonts support. Here is an old screenshot of KWord 1.4.1 displaying Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic and Hebrew letters, Chinese hanzi, Japanese hiragana and Korean hangul:

http://ariszlo.tripod.com/scr1.html50 • koffice (by Anonymous on 2006-07-26 01:07:57 GMT from Rohnert Park, United States)
"the idea that everytime KOffice is mentioned, one needs a disclaimer is ridiculously pedantic."

Agreed, generally, but not in this discussion.

In the review the author is recommending Koffice software for office tasks.

For office work, appearance and compatibility are important. Koffice, a superior set of applications for many purposes, is handicapped in important ways.

Give KOffice to a friend who has Windows or a Mac, or has Linux with Open Office, who works in an office and say, "Here, use KWord, Kpresenter, and KSpreadsheet for those pesky office tasks." That friend will become distressed rather quickly.

Print out a formal letter using sans serif proportional font with KWord and compare the printed text to text generated by Open Office or any Windows or Mac application. The difference is significant.

Try to edit and save files that are compatible with MS Office. Compatibility with respect to file format, at this point, is poor compared to some other Linux office aps.

Actually, I am most curious about why Linux users including Distrowatch would recommend Koffice for office tasks when there is a known issue with print quality. The fix for the print kerning issue apparently continues to be deferred to the future. I wonder if there are so few Koffice users with real office-related needs that superior print quality just doesn't make the priority list.

Perhaps it's simply that the vast majority of Linux users really don't need top quality printed documents and are unconcerned about users who do.

It may not be "YMMV". It could be more like, "We don't need excellent mileage and it's not real important to us that a few of you do."51 • No subject (by Odysseus on 2006-07-26 04:51:55 GMT from Auckland, New Zealand)
"those pesky office tasks"

Where I come from 'Pesky' is defined as small and annoying, which seems to be your appraisal of tasks that KOffice is fit for?

"The fix for the print kerning issue apparently continues to be deferred to the future"

With good reason. As has been repeated many times, the problem lies in the Qt3 toolkit, not KOffice itself. The solution lies in the port currently being undertaken to the Qt4 toolkit for KDE4.

Besides, printing is so last century, I rarely print office documents anymore :-)

The devs acknowledge that some of their filters are not up to scratch for heavy file sharing with MSOffice users, their main aim seems to be to support people migrating over to KOffice. For file sharing, they've concentrated their VERY limited resources into implementing ODF as the native file format, which ensures compatibility with OOo, and perhaps MSOffice when its ODF plugin is working fully.

And you're missing the context here. For those needing OOo, it's in the SLAX repository, but you try fitting OOo into a 200Mb live ISO and you'll see why they choose KOffice instead :-)

John.52 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-07-26 10:17:31 GMT from Los Angeles, United States)
What happened to the Distrowatch page that listed what distro other distros are based on? Is it still available?Also, a week or so ago I noticed a new release based partially on Kanotix, but now I can't find it and I don't remember the name of the distro. The Latest Distributions list only goes back 3 or 4 days. That is not much depth. Is there a way to search back farther for resent distribution releases on DistroWatch?53 • Re: 52 • No subject (by Ariszló on 2006-07-26 12:04:23 GMT from Budapest, Hungary)
It is here:http://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=independence54 • 53 • Re: 52, continued (by Ariszló on 2006-07-26 12:10:49 GMT from Budapest, Hungary)
Oops, it is no longer up to date. Try the Search page instead:http://distrowatch.com/search.phphttp://distrowatch.com/search.php?basedon=KANOTIX&status=Active55 • MEPIS reference page (by vdb on 2006-07-26 14:46:51 GMT from Torino, Italy)
Hi !The MEPIS reference page on Distrowatch still needs to be updated.It shows as current release 6.0rc3.56 • Puppy works better than ever (by Lobster on 2006-07-26 17:06:05 GMT from Rochdale, United Kingdom)
To clarify what I feel are perfectly fair comments about the 2.xx series of Puppy. The 1.xx series is still being used but we are encouraging development and use of the 2 series, most people are delighted with it.

Version 1.09CE (many people still use it - it was our first Community Enhanced edition) was the last version based on the developed stable structure. It is very stable and usable. In 6 months and 8 test releases, the surface of Puppy looked the same but the underlying structure is different.

Barry is also going over to k2 - multi processor support is on the way. Because Puppy is so good, people have high expectations. A new test release will be available this week and our second community enhanced version will be based on the stable release of that.

If you want our most stable release use 1.09CE but we would prefer you grow with us. Get the latest. It works. Have fun.57 • Answer to Lobster (by Caraibes on 2006-07-26 20:48:35 GMT from Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)
My friend Lobster,

I am actually writing you from Puppy 2.x. I do enjoy tremendously Puppy, and all my critics are friendly critics...

These days my main desktop is Blag 50000, but I also have one PC running Zenwalk, and my live-cd of choice is Puppy.

Puppy 1.09 is on my USB pendrive because it installed fine...

So I just wanted to say that I trust you guys, and I am sure Barry andthe crew will do a great job...

As a matter of fct, one of my PC's has no more hdd, and all others are being used by customers, while my wife has the main one... So I am really gratefull to Puppy to allow me to browse the web and relax on this hdd-less pc.58 • Re: #51 Koffice (by Anonymous on 2006-07-27 02:07:16 GMT from Rohnert Park, United States)
"Besides, printing is so last century"

Yes... and no... The demise of paper printing may be only wishful thinking, at least for the next decade.

My employer uses less paper for data printouts and monthly reporting. However, overall we use as much paper as in the past in spite of policy to reduce paper consumption. Email has not reduced the use of bond paper in our large U.S. organization.

Attractive hard-copy presentation wins arguments. It sells ideas and products. And convenient... it can be taken into the bathroom for serious study! It's essential in the business world. One would expect developing countries to begin to fully appreciate its advantages.

Printing is far less important to hobbyists, which accounts for our differences.

"And you're missing the context here... you try fitting OOo into a 200Mb live ISO and you'll see why they choose KOffice instead :-)"

You still made some interesting and important points. Though probably not appropriate to the context, it was still a valuable contribution. No need for apologies.

And it was I who said "ridiculously pedantic". ;-)60 • No subject (by Anonymous on 2006-07-27 21:09:11 GMT from Santa Barbara, United States)
"'They included KWord, Kpresenter, andKSpreadsheet for those pesky office tasks.'

The implication is that these applications are suited to the task."

There's no such implication.

"In the review the author is recommending Koffice software for office tasks."

The author is doing no such thing. You really need to learn how to read, and to interpret what you read. The author simply noted that those KDE apps are included in the release, with a cutesy phrase about what those apps are for. There's nothing there at all about the quality of the apps, how good they are at the task, whether including them was wise, or anything of the sort. It's fine that you have a bug up your butt about Koffice, apparently for good reasons, but that's no excuse for accusing people of doing things they didn't do.61 • Google hosting code (by Raymond on 2006-07-28 01:29:32 GMT from Forestville, Australia)
#56: Puppy is having some growing pains :( Looking forward to the rejuvinated puppy.

What about this: Google is now hosting opensource code like Sourceforge. Are they trying to gobble up everything on the net?

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1531062 • 61 related points (by AC on 2006-07-28 01:40:58 GMT from , United States)http://www.joachim-breitner.de/blog/archives/60-Launchpad,-Google-and-why-Microsoft-is-not-the-problem.html63 • re apt-get and depencies (by Warpengi on 2006-07-28 02:07:56 GMT from Calgary, Canada)
Thanks people for the responses to my query, just got around to checking today. Some very useful suggestions there. I expect the information was helpful to more than just me. It occurs to me that I could have done a little googling or read some man pages. Sometimes it is nice to simply ask a question and get the answer without looking.64 • No subject (by Fud 4 All at 2006-07-28 18:10:11 GMT from Lake Havasu City, United States)http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1993707,00.aspI think I will keep the iPod I already use.65 • FreeBSD packages on install cds, 6.1-RELEASE-i386-disc1 and disc2 (by Antonio on 2006-07-28 20:37:31 GMT from Corpus Christi, United States)
On the distrowatch page of FreeBSD, it lists a bunch of packages that available on FreeBSD. When you install, some of those packages are not there, i.e, tetex-3.0. I know that to get TeTeX to work, one can build it from the ports system. Yet it is shown on the page that tetex-3.0 comes with the install discs. It makes me wonder.

Also, Mplayer on FreeBSD is old, still with 0.99 series, while the new version MPlayer-1.08 runs very nicely.

Ghostscript is still 7.07 while NetBSD and other have ghostscript-8.16 or newer.

Why doesn't the new code appear on FreeBSD. After all one can do a# make install cleanand get the latest available sources if one has a decent internet connection, ie. high speed and not dialup.66 • Configuration (by Jill Hudson on 2006-07-28 22:40:41 GMT from Exeter, United States)
I'm kind of confused, I read an article that I wanted to post this specifically to, and now this looks like it's all of them? Not sure.

Okay, so I've been using a product to configure my servers, and it has helped a lot with disaster recovery which was covered in one of the articles...

It's called Auditor Lite, it can be found here:

I didn't know if anyone else had experience with it or if anyone has ever used the Basic after using the Lite version, because I'm looking into getting it. Thanks.67 • Please help... (by Anonymous Penguin on 2006-07-30 04:05:40 GMT from Roma, Italy)
Please help the SymphonyOS project if you can:

It would be also *very nice* if the next DistroWatch donation could go that way: Ryan Quinn has done a lot to innovate, and now he happens to be in trouble...68 • XFree86 returns (by Ariszló on 2006-07-30 15:05:09 GMT from Budapest, Hungary)
Most Linux distributions have abandoned XFree86 for xorg due to various reasons but now aLinux 12.8 is shipped with XFree86 rather than Xorg. Any ideas why? Is XFree86 4.6.0 technically superior to Xorg?

http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=0360069 • xfree (by AC on 2006-07-30 19:59:16 GMT from , United States)
My only guess is that there's still an issue with ati drivers for x.org. But I'd thought that had been resolved.70 • Love Ubuntu - hate these flaws! (by Kim Connors on 2006-07-31 04:16:47 GMT from Sudbury, Canada)
My biggest whine in respect to Ubuntu,( which I otherwise love), has got to be:

(1) The lack of a fix for the Live Dapper Install on my Asus/AMD64 3000/Nvidia system. My only resort is to install Breezy 5.10, then upgrade to 6.06 via Synaptic.

The Alternate Dapper cd gave me the same faulty " blank screen" result.

Oddly enough it install well on my Celeron with the same FX5200 Nvidia card.

(2) HPLIP printer install failure. One must resort to long manual tar installation. Mine was buggy. I had to remove it and go with Cups only.